What’s actually happening is that I’ve ended up with an A4 Moleskine Sketchbook and I’m using the little Techo instead of the Leuchtturm.

I know, right? It caught me by surprise too.

The Moleskine Sketchbook as a journal

I bought a little 4×6 photo printer and have been having a ball with it. The big Moleskine gives me room to glue a photo or two to a page and still write stuff around it. I’m really liking this.

The Techo is so wonderful I just couldn’t leave it on the sidelines, so I put the Bullet Journal aside instead. I’m still working out how to make the Techo “Bullet Journal-esque” but for now I’m just pretending it’s a normal Bullet Journal with a built in calendar. It’s working fine so far.

I keep reading that people love Notion.so, and I don’t mean to rock the boat, but I don’t get it. I tried kicking it around a few times and almost nothing about it clicks for me. Notion strikes me as one of those things that tries to do everything but ends up doing nothing well.

I can’t imagine using it with a team and them being able to keep track of what’s used for what and why. I couldn’t even get a team to manage a few todo lists in Asana.

If enough people keep raving, I’m sure I’ll give Notion another go. But for now, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Coming from a Chemex and basic stove-top kettle, the Stagg has been quite an improvement. Water heats faster, with precision. Pouring is delicate and controllable. The filtering happens more quickly. I love the funnel, serving markings, and drip catcher. I make 2 cups, and the second cup stays hot in the double-walled glass carafe while I drink the first cup.

I like coffee, but I’ve never thought too much about it. Suddenly, I’ve started to care. The entire process of making a cup of coffee has become delightful, so I’m thinking about where I can go from here.

I remain infatuated with TiddlyWiki. There’s a certain genius in its design that has captured my imagination.

As an experiment, I started a new wiki and published it at rudimentarylathe.org. I’m easily distracted by shiny new things, so I spent a few days learning my way around TiddlyWiki by posting notes and miscellaneous snippets there.

What I’m finding is that TiddlyWiki is changing how I think about writing online. I don’t yet understand why, but I suspect it’s about being able to just throw things at it without feeling like I’m “publishing”. There’s no RSS feed. The only way anyone else might read what I write there is if I link to it on my “real” blog or if someone just stumbles upon it. It feels like a personal, but not private, space.

I think of each “tiddler” in my wiki is just a blob of text that is by default unrelated to everything else. I can link and tag them in order to define some semblance of structure, but it’s not necessary. There are “Recent” and “New” tabs but otherwise there’s not really a “timeline” of any sort. I’m currently putting recent entries on the main “Story” view but that’s probably just vestigial behavior from years of a reverse-chronological mindset. It’s very refreshing!

Any wiki could do most of this, but there’s something different the way TiddlyWiki goes about it. It feels different, in that it’s not page-based, but note-based. Or maybe thought-based. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’m digging it.

So, what am I putting at rudimentarylathe.org? I’m not sure yet. So far it’s been…

The split layout isn’t for me. It feels like one more thing to adjust and I’m not sold on the ergonomic advantages. I’ve been using a Happy Hacking Keyboard for a while and I love it. I’m not even sure why I tried anything else. Probably because the UHK is so damn customizable. I tried customizing it every way I could think of but nothing felt right. Also, I’m sure that having to switch between UHK and HHKB layouts between work and home would drive me nuts.

…the more fundamental thing is that [Netflix are] the people who are stepping up and spending money on movies that aren’t Marvel comic movies or big action franchise movies and that type of thing, which is pretty much the business of the studios now. We can’t argue with that.